CHAPTER XXII
It snowed softly in Leicester on Christmas Day of the year 1380, and to the hundreds of guests sheltered at the castle and the Abbey of St. Mary-in-the-Meadows, and in other foundations and lodgings throughout the town, the pure white drifts were good omen for young Henry of Bolingbroke's wedding to little Mary de Bohun.
Of all the Duke's country castles since he had abandoned Bolingbroke, Kenilworth and Leicester were his favourites, and the latter was the more fitting for the marriage of the Lancastrian heir.
The Duchess Blanche had been born here and her father, the noble Duke Henry, was buried here in the beautiful Church of the Newarke which he himself had built to enshrine his most treasured relic, a thorn from Christ's crown of martyrdom.
This joint celebration of Christmastide and a wedding had tuned Leicester to feverish pitch. Each night mummers came to the castle dressed as bears and devils and green men, to scamper on their hobby-horses through the Great Hall. And each night a fresh boar's head was borne in to the feasting and greeted by its own carol, "Caput Apri Defero."
And this Christmastide was a feast of light and music. Scented yule candles burned all night, while the streets of Leicester were extravagantly lit by torches that cast their rosy flames on the snow. The waits sang "Here We Come a-Wassailing" in the courtyards, the monks chanted "Veni Emmanuel" in the churches, and in the castle gallery the Duke's minstrels played carols without ceasing.
On the night of the wedding there was a riotous banquet in the castle hall. Katherine's sides ached from laughing at the Lord of Misrule, who was dressed in a fool's costume, a-jingle with tiny bells, and wore a tinsel crown on his head to show that he was king and must be obeyed. The Lord of Misrule had been chosen by lot, and happened to be Robin Beyyill, though one soon forgot that, because he was masked. Robin's nimble brain thought of many a comical jape, and he won laughter even from the frightened little bride when he seized a peacock feather in lieu of sword and solemnly knighted Jupiter, the Duke's oldest hound.
Katherine sat beside the Duke, but they were not in their usual seats of honour, for those were given to the bride and groom - and Richard.
The King and many of his meinie, including his beloved Robert de Vere, had come to Leicester for his cousin's wedding, though not his mother, the Princess Joan. Joan sent polite messages to Katherine occasionally but they had not met since the coronation. To this wedding invitation Joan had answered that her aching joints and swollen leg veins confined her to Westminster. This avoidance had hurt Katherine for a while, and then she accepted it, with a certain defiance. The Duke had told her of the Princess' request that he hide Katherine away in one of the northern castles and of his indignant repudiation of the idea, adding with tenderness, "It seems Joan has forgot what love is, sweet heart, or she couldn't suggest such a thing.''
In fact, Joan's intervention had but increased his ardour, and far from hiding Katherine during these three and a half years, he had taken her with him on all his journeys throughout England. The constables of his Yorkshire castles, Pickering, Knaresborough and the gloomy Pontefract, of the High Peak in Derbyshire, of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Tutbury in Staffordshire, as well as of Kenilworth and Leicester, had grown accustomed to receiving Lady Swynford in the Duchess' place.
Nor during that time did these constables ever see the Castilian Duchess. She remained at Hertford in retirement. Rumour said that she was sickly, a little crazed. Certain it was that she bore no more children - which could not be said of Lady Swynford. There were four Beaufort bastards now, the last, a year-old girl, christened Joan for her father. The Duke appeared to dote on all these babies as wholeheartedly as though they had been fair-born.
The three little Beaufort boys, John, Harry and Thomas, squatted now on stools by their parents' knees, gaping at the antics of their elders, while the Duke caressed the curly yellow head of his namesake and asked Katherine some laughing question with all the fond domesticity of a contented husband.
No one else took much notice of the Duke and Katherine, all eyes were turned on the Lord of Misrule, the bridal couple and the King; but Geoffrey Chaucer watched his sister-in-law with sharp interest.
By the rood, thought Geoffrey, settling back in slightly tipsy contentment, little Katherine had thoroughly tamed that fierce Plantagenet leopard! It must be nine years that she had enthralled him, and to judge by the Duke's attitude now, his passion for her was strong as ever. That was a long time for the sweet fire to burn so bright, Geoffrey thought with a touch of envy, yet he had always deemed Katherine an exceptional woman. She had borne six children, she must be about thirty, but her beauty was undimmed, though it had acquired assurance and lost the touching wistfulness. The new quality was not brazenness, certainly; Katherine could never be that. Yet there were changes. Her gown was low-cut as that of Edmund's promiscuous Isabella, and Katherine leaned openly against the Duke's shoulder as she had never used to. Still, her grey eyes were clear as crystal, her high white brow smooth as a girl's and the new-fashioned Bohemian headdress gave to her a look of shining delicacy. Though on many women the balanced crescent moon above their faces unfortunately suggested a horned cow. It was so with his Philippa.
It was a year of weddings and matchmaking. The Duke, singlehearted in all that he did, having turned his mind to domestic matters, had now married off two of his children in ways most advantageous to their prosperity if not their happiness. However, nobody expected happiness from marriage and least of all the Duke, though he had achieved it once. Even now, though Geoffrey was fat and forty, his staid heart felt a springtime thrill at the memory of the Duchess Blanche.
The Duke had procured for his Henry another great English heiress, such as Blanche had been, but the marriage of these two children promised no such felicity. Henry was thirteen and his bride twelve. Up there at the High Table, in her glittering finery, one could see the child trembling like a little white leveret. But she would return to her mother's care tomorrow. The Duke had no intention of prematurely taxing the breeding powers that would eventually produce the next Lancastrian heir, though some less wise fathers threw the children into bed together at any age and accepted whatever consequences might arise.
"She's an ill-tempered vixen," asserted Philippa suddenly, enunciating with great care. "She's scowling at me."
"Who?" asked Geoffrey, looking around.
Philippa raised her spoon and pointed at the hawk-nosed Countess of Buckingham. "Her. Bride's sister."
Geoffrey said, "Nonsense!" soothingly. " 'Tis simply that she dislikes this wedding, scowls at everyone."
Though it was true that Eleanor de Bohun's angry eyes rested on Philippa's dishevelment with disgust, her fish mouth was set in continual disapproval anyway. Thomas of Woodstock's wife vehemently agreed with her husband, and resented the Duke's perfidy in snatching her little sister from the convent where they had sent her to be a nun. Mary's return to secular life and marriage to Henry reinstated her as coheiress to the vast Bohun fortune and correspondingly halved Eleanor's share.
Only an uneasy desire to keep an eye on the proceedings, lest worse befall, had brought Eleanor to the wedding at all, and she made no effort to be civil.
"She glares at me," retorted Philippa belligerently, "because she dares not be rude to Katherine. Oh, I heard her in the garde-robe, squawking to her ladies that I'd no right to be seated above the salt. She called me a pantry wench married to naught but a scribbling wool-counter."
Geoffrey recrossed his legs and considered with amusement the Lady Eleanor's contempt. Scribbling wool-counter no doubt he was, but a much travelled one on the King's secret service. Peace negotiations, royal marriage negotiations, in France, in Flanders, in Italy, he had acquitted himself well in these. Though general recognition might be pleasant, its absence was not upsetting.